


lay me gently in the cold, dark earth (no grave can hold my body down)

by xerampelinae



Series: a god big enough to hold your love [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe, Bathing/Washing, Gods and Monsters, Implied Sexual Content, Keith (Voltron)-centric, M/M, Playing fast and loose with mythology, playing fast and loose with canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-10
Updated: 2018-08-10
Packaged: 2019-06-25 07:25:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15636006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xerampelinae/pseuds/xerampelinae
Summary: When the universe was empty, there was only quiet. Then out of nothingness came the first of the Five Gods: the Black Lion, Guardian of the Sky, and the Red Lion, Guardian of Fire. The First God and the Second came together in the great dark and brought forth light.-Alternate mythologies and beginnings.





	lay me gently in the cold, dark earth (no grave can hold my body down)

**Author's Note:**

> This is the most spicy thing I've written...which is not very spicy at all...just a heads-up...
> 
> Disaster brain: what if fake greek myth au  
> Galaxy brain: what if fake Elusinian rites are part of the Keith/Shiro backstory and they've loved each other a long time?

Keith is taken into the Temple of the Five Gods when he is ten. An adherent picks him out of the assembled school even before finding out he is an orphan--unfortunate on the personal level, fortunate on the divine--but, Shiro says kindly, it’s a choice.

Keith has always slipped the attentions of the previous adherents of the various gods that seek their faithful in the city states and the scattered villages; ill, or driven to ground by faceless instinct. Shiro is the first of any god’s chosen to see Keith, let alone anything in him worth consideration.

“I haven’t been chosen yet,” Shiro admits. Not every adherent is chosen to live as a votary, to live in one of the Five’s temples and serve their god’s needs. Fewer still are chosen as their god’s paladin. “My grandfather asked that I wait until after his passing, if I were to choose.”

“Did you?” Keith asks, mouth moving before he can stop it.

“I did,” Shiro says, smiling more gently. “If you are called to the temple, ask for me and I will speak for you.”

“Why?” Keith asks.

“You have so much potential,” Shiro says. “If you’ll let me, I want to help you.”

Keith is quiet, but when Shiro leaves the village, Keith’s steps shadow his.

-

When the universe was empty, there was only quiet. Then out of nothingness came the first of the Five Gods: the Black Lion, Guardian of the Sky, and the Red Lion, Guardian of Fire. The First God and the Second came together in the great dark and brought forth light.

Just as the Black and Red Lions precede the Three, so too do their chosen precede those of the remaining gods of the Five. The Black Lion always leads the way, even if not found first. The Red Lion stands at his right, most devoted of all.

Out of the cosmos and fire all else follows.

-

There are few devotees to the Five these days, and fewer still to the First and Second Gods and their preferences. Few revere the Black Lion over all else despite its greater strength. The cosmos are too great to know. Only the adherents of the First and Second Gods pray at Black’s alters; no few prefer the more sedate and younger trio. Farmers fear fire, after all, and disregard the sky in favor of the twinned aspects of earth and the blessing of rain. The Three have always been more palatable, but weaker.

Beyond the span of their city state are foreigner’s gods--the Galra’s ever-wandering Zarkon, raised monstrously from demi-mortality, and his servants, and the gods of lands even more distant--whose popularity swell with the growth of the city states.

The Cosmic Rites, secretive and ancient, are still maintained. Shiro and Keith are simultaneously inducted. They mark adulthood in their own ways; the temples let them keep their village customs when they entered as students. Shiro cuts his hair short. Keith wears his own loose and long until the rites’ end, when he begins to pin it up. 

What none know as the Paladins of the First and Second Gods do is the ritual of re-enactment: tracing their gods’ path through the night-dark sky; to descend into darkness in search of fire, first to take up the mantle, then to honor and invoke their gods in the union of fire and sky. To stand at the First God’s side as his right hand is to stand as his equal. 

There are reasons that the Second God chooses so quickly after the First, even as their choices remain hidden. 

It is a content life, made peaceful in the sharing of days and labor. Then, one day, Shiro escorts two of the temple’s votaries to an emptied temple to gather what material can be found in the remains of its library. A Galran raiding party snatches them up; their loss is discovered when the sentries on a nearby watchtower realize they haven’t seen the three since before the raiding party came through.

There is less uproar for a mere orphan snatched up by a hostile and unknown empire than for an adherent of their most chief of gods. The votaries easily dismiss Shiro’s loss to the Galran empire and, when he protests, banish Keith from the grounds. The temple of the Five Gods goes silent. It is a creeping silence; only those that know to listen would know the difference. With Keith gone, no one is left to listen.

Before he goes, Keith kneels before the altar of the First God and offers up a prayer for strength--for Shiro, for himself for Shiro--the temple rumbles with the thunder of the First God’s approval.

“I can't give up on him,” Keith says, eyes welling with unshed tears and knuckles stinging. “And I know you can't either.”

The attention of the First God follows Keith when he leaves with his loose mourner’s hair. Behind him, the altar of the Second God shutters in its own way. Silence rings out once more through the temple of the Five Gods. The Three are wandering gods, but the First and Second stray more rarely. It is a sign that slips through the temple guardians’ hands. Too many of the altars lie empty of honest devotion. The temple rings hollow.

-

Keith makes his way back to the village Shiro had found him in, all those years before. It’s emptier these days; a sickness had swept through some time after his departure, taking indiscriminately from the population. Instead of the orphanage, his feet carry him to a small temple, abandoned but still obviously in honor of the First God, who had once been the area’s guardian. There is a space for the Second God there as well; one cannot be worshipped without the other. Without Shiro there, it falls to Keith to maintain the altar of the First God, knowing that his own god will understand the division in his attention.

There is a fathomless security to the temple that grows as Keith cleans and waits and relearns the area. He keeps his ear to the ground and learns what he can of the Galra’s movements--how they raid areas, and what works against them--and their prisoners.

He practices swordwork but it’s different without Shiro. Keith persists.

One day the Third God comes close, movements preceding adherents of the Three. Their footsteps are bold, exploratory strikes against the road in the hours counting down to an unknown grasping at Keith’s attention. He debates the approaches, calculating who will arrive first.

What comes first is the unknown, singing through the skies and back to earth. Iverson and his faithful pour out of the temple they occupy--closer, somewhat, than the temple Keith reclaimed--and surround the fallen object.

It’s like the carriage the Red Lion gifted the sun, in all the stories telling of how day and night came to be, but shattered to useless scrap where it fell. Keith punches his way through the gathered votaries and finds Shiro, face changed and yet unchanged. A bruise swells slowly on his cheekbone; there was no poppy to deliver Shiro to quiet oblivion, only violence to follow what has already scarred Shiro’s body. 

Keith cuts Shiro free of improvised bindings, mind scrabbling to plan two steps ahead even as he carries Shiro’s weight with him. He will do what he has to get Shiro to safety, he swears to their gods. Then they’re not alone--a trio whose hearts beat for a future devoted to the Three--and all of them work together to carry Shiro’s loose-limbed weight back pas Keith’s village to lay him down on the thin pallet Keith keeps as his bed.

The trio are young enough to not yet been chosen by a god--older than Keith and Shiro had been, but they were young to be chosen--and wander the temple Keith maintains, bolder than they would in the temple they grew up in. There are no stern, aged votaries here to demand quiet and obedience here.

Keith embraces the respite, taking time to take stock of Shiro. He’s broadened in his months away, fought hard and bled hard. His right arm is gone to the bicep, but replaced almost seamlessly with an arm of living metal, like a gift of the Fourth God. The tunic is a tattered cotton dried stiff; Shiro’s feet are bare. Keith considers what few material possessions he has to share. He sets aside the lonely bundle of Shiro’s clothing he’d brought for one of his father’s spare tunics. Keith smoothes out the linen tunic and thanks the compulsion to clean after his return.

It could have been a crackle of straw, or a change in the tide of Shiro’s breathing, but Keith turns and Shiro’s looking at him from across the room.

“Hey,” Keith says, crossing over and kneeling beside the pallet. Shiro looks at him with wide eyes for a long moment, not speaking, then slowly pushes himself up. Keith’s hands hover around Shiro’s arms, then lower to his lap. For a moment he fears that Shiro doesn’t remember him, or if there’s a worse option.

Shiro’s hands curl and unfurl uncertainly before one extends and curves tentatively over Keith’s cheek. “Keith?” Shiro whispers.

Keith shuts his eyes against the sudden flood of emotion. Wordless, he covers Shiro’s hand with his own--the living metal, he realizes when Shiro jolts in place--as if his two hands can shield Shiro from anything that wishes to harm him.

“It’s good to have you back,” Keith whispers. 

Shiro’s thumb strokes Keith’s cheek as they shift closer as one. “It’s good to be back,” Shiro whispers against his mouth, and kisses him.

-

“What happened out there?” Keith asks, hands gentle and unlingering as he helps Shiro bathe.

“I don’t know,” Shiro admits, looking down at the arm of living metal, the expanse of scarred flesh laid bare under their eyes as accumulated sweat and dirt are washed away.

The Third God calls distantly, encouraging. “It’s okay, Shiro,” Keith promises. “We’ll figure it out.”

Beneath his palms Shiro shudders and nods.

-

The trio are knelt around a scroll left unfurled, full of Keith’s sketched-out maps and notes, when Keith and Shiro find their way back to the wide, central chamber.

From an outsider’s view, the scroll most look like a product of obsession. Keith tries not to think of how desperately he’d felt while working on it, how _it’s killing me when you’re away_ is scrawled openly across the margin. Shiro’s hand settles on Keith’s shoulder, grounding.

“There’s something in the hills,” Keith says. “It’s been calling out ever since I came back.”

“Weird,” one of the trio--Lance?--says.

“That looks like the face that Pidge was drawing last night,” another--Hunk?--says, shuffling through the third’s bag, then to Shiro. “Right before you fell from the sky.”

“Hey!” the one who must be Pidge yelps, snatching their bag and scroll back. “The oracle bones were casting themselves last night, all I did was read them. Something about a Voltron.”

“Voltron?” Shiro murmurs. 

The word is like a lightning bolt in Keith’s heart. “The Face of the Five Made One,” he murmurs numbly.

“We’ll follow you, Keith,” Shiro says. “Lead the way.

-

At the end of the path is a shallow cave carved with lions--an older style of carving, more like Keith’s temple than their home temple. Keith’s been here before; he hangs back at Shiro’s side as the the trio explore. Under Lance’s touch, the carvings light up and the floor crumbles away underfoot. 

They fall.

They find themselves in a shallow stretch of an underground river at the foot of a great metal lion--less statue, they find, as it lights up under Lance’s hands, more a living metal--large enough to swallow each one of them down without trouble. Large enough to carry them out of the cave, bursting effortlessly through the stone wall.

“The Oracle of Oriande,” Keith murmurs as Lance whoops and Hunk yelps fearfully and they all brace against one another as the lion jumps and rolls playfully through the air. Keith bumps into Shiro’s solid chest and lets himself trust that Shiro will take his weight.

“To Oriande,” Shiro repeats louder, steady as an oak as the world spins around the lion carrying them.

-

A Galran raiding party crossing the river on a longboat catches sight of them, shouting and slinging great spears. The lion diverts long enough to overturn the longboat mid-river and divert the raiders’ attentions from the nearby village. 

Uncertainly, they continue on.

-

The lion carries them to an entrance far from the assembled crowd--those hopeful that this day, the doors might open and admit visitors to the oracle--where the doors stand open and the lion lets them loose. They look at each other with open worry and enter the temple of Oriande.

“Paladins,” the Oracle says. “Paladins of Voltron.”

“Voltron?” Shiro says.

“My father helped craft it--out of metal shells for the Five. To form the Face of the Five Made One,” the Oracle says.

“You’re an Altean,” Pidge says. “They say they are all gone--”

“No,” a second Altean says. “Not quite yet.”

-

They find the remaining lions. Each is taller and as fast as the carriage Shiro fell from the sky in, each so strange that they must be touched by something divine, yet had been built by mortal hands.

“My father always said that it felt like something greater was guiding his hands,” the Oracle--Allura--admits. “Like he was only freeing the shape hidden in the metal.”

Hunk and Pidge--with their hearts that follow the strength and solid nature of the earth--have no answers for that.

-

They fight Zarkon, recoiling at the traces of the First God’s strength wound frightfully through his own. Shiro is cast forth from his lion. Keith stands between Zarkon and Shiro because he cannot do anything else. If he bleeds--if he breaks--it will be worth it to have protected Shiro when he needed it.

And he does bleed. These days Zarkon is closer to divinity and Keith is a great but mortal warrior. Keith is limp and gasping helplessly in his lion even as Zarkon readies for one final blow. 

Shiro saves him then, as he always does. Keith lets his weight be carried, hanging limp at the controls of his lion.

-

Memory trickles its way back into Shiro’s mind, like a pattern emerging from a great tapestry as its weaving progresses.

“Someone helped me get free,” Shiro confesses.

“We'll find them,” Keith promises.

“It could be a trap,” Pidge says. “We still don't know exactly what they did to you.”

“Only that a witch was involved,” Hunk says, “which, who knows what hidden spells might have been cast and lie inactive.”

Keith grips Shiro’s shoulder. “We'll find them,” he repeats, even as the others protest.

-

Shiro takes back his lion’s bayard from Zarkon--it’s a gut-punch to think about how one who had been so devoted would turn their back for the sake of power and immortality. It’s a betrayal, too, for the knowledge withheld by Allura and Coran.

“You put us all in danger,” Keith snaps, and the Alteans recoil. “You left us vulnerable, for the sake of what?”

“Keith,” Shiro says, grounding.

“My father was once Second God’s chosen for the Cosmic Rites,” Allura says finally, “when Zarkon was the First God’s.”

“I understand that it's hard to discuss,” Shiro says, “but Keith’s right. You should have told us.”

-

Shiro remembers cryptic instructions that lead to a hidden valley isolated from mortal presence. They find Ulaz--Galra, but a rebel, he says, not all Galra are faithful to Zarkon's empire--but he dies shortly to one of Haggar’s monsters. 

Keith and Shiro forge ahead of the others, hoping to take a less threatening appearance as a lone pair. They descend on foot, leaving their lions behind.

At the camp’s boundaries, the leader orders a ritual disarmament, to be followed by sharing bread of equally ritualistic hospitality. Dissent breaks out when Keith lays his knife down alongside his paladin’s sword.

“Where did you steal that from?” the leader hisses, sending a warrior forward to knock Keith into the packed dirt and pin him there.

“I've had it for years,” Keith says, and, “Shiro--” before he’s forced to regain his wind.

“All the time that we’ve known each other,” Shiro says. “What is the relevance of the knife?”

“It does not belong to him,” the leader insists. “He cannot keep it.”

“He was not asked to leave it behind when he entered the temple,” Shiro says. “How can you ask what his gods would not?”

“The only way to keep a blade like that is to earn it. Knowledge or death. Which do you choose?” the leader gestures his warrior back, letting Keith push himself up out of the dirt.

“You don’t have to,” Shiro says, murmuring to Keith as he kneels down beside him. “We don’t need this--we can go and forget about this.”

“No,” Keith says, thinking of the few allies they’ve gathered so far, the vague spectre of a past that he thought dead with his father, “I can do this.”

-

The knife, offered up for Shiro’s safety, becomes a sword in a match of the form Keith’s bayard takes. The Blades stumble to a halt, weapons lowered, even as Shiro turns and lets his living metal arm fall inactive to his side.

“Keith?” Shiro says.

“Congratulations, you have shown yourself to be a worthy warrior,” the leader says. “Only the blood of Galra can activate a blade of Marmora.”

-

A suffocating silence falls as they carry several Blades back to meet the other paladins. It is a meeting that could go better, but also could have gone worse.

“It is an honor to count one of your warriors as a Blade of Marmora,” the leader-- _Kolivan--_ says.

“What do you--” Allura says.

“I have Galran blood,” Keith says, confrontational and sharp as when he and Shiro had met and he tried to make it easy for Shiro to give up on him, because at least that way he could see the end coming. It’s been a long time since Shiro’s seen Keith like this.

“Enough,” Shiro says, watching the others recoil and Allura’s face twist in a snarl at odds with the controlled demeanor she prefers to show. “It’s been a long day for all of us. We can come back to this in the morning.”

Murmurs of assent ring out across the camp. Keith disappears before anyone else can say anything.

-

“Shiro--” Keith says, halting in the bathing chamber. He’s stiff with discomfort, bleeding again after an attempt to remove his armor, and beside that beaten into an almost continuous bruise. He’s withdrawn, shoulders folded forward like he’s trying to compress the amount of space he occupies, like he’s afraid that some part of himself will hurt Shiro.

“Everything’s going to be okay, Keith,” Shiro says, and draws himself closer.

“But, Shiro--” Keith says, hiccuping as tears begin to track down his cheeks. “I’m--”

"--Exactly the same person you always were," Shiro says, gently swiping the tears away. "My right hand, the one I want at my side. Right?"

Keith sobs once and nods.

"Right," Shiro says, beaming gently down at Keith. "Let me help you?"

Tears still falling, Keith nods assent. Shiro’s hands strip off the paladin’s armor with easy, familiar motions; nothing that stresses Keith’s injuries. The tunic is a different story: cut close enough to be harder to require careful maneuvering now that Keith has grown more and broadened, and besides that dried stiff to the cut on Keith’s shoulder. Wordlessly, Keith passes his knife to Shiro and shivers as the tunic falls from his shoulders as rent, bloodied cotton.

Shiro eases Keith into the shallow basin that they use for bathing, wetting a rag and guiding it gently over Keith's skin, cleans enough that Shiro can take the small kit he brought with him and wrap Keith's shoulder. Keith is silent and white with pain through it all. Finally Shiro sets down the supplies and pauses to press a gentle kiss to Keith's wrist.

"Shiro," Keith whispers, and slides gingerly down into his arms to kiss him more deeply.

"I don't want to hurt you," Shiro says, looking at the lingering pallor on Keith's face.

"Please," Keith says. Quiet, expectant of rejection, even now.

Shiro sighs against the ache in his heart and pulls Keith closer, feeling taut muscle go lax as he pets Keith's crown firmly. "Gently," he says, hands seeking out places that will not hurt to be held.

Keith shakes in his gentle grip and falls into the next kiss like he's drowning and has found his salvation.

“Elsewhere,” Shiro says, washing the rest of Keith’s body clean and enfolding him in a fresh, loose linen tunic until they can find a place to rest. “Come.”

Shivering, Keith obeys.

-

Shiro is always gentle when they do this, and gentler still when Keith carries more aches than not. Not for lack of passion--that has always been present, even from the first, confused time where they were something more than themselves--but Shiro’s hands are deft and kind as they open Keith up.

There’s a veil of uncertainty to remembering. Something about the Blade’s trial has awoken the memory of ancient rites; when the paladins were not yet chosen, a sweet mist spread across the ritual grounds and adherents loosed through the dark, winding caverns. There had been an outsider, an interloper, attempting to disrupt the rites. Keith had fiercely fought him off, barehanded and night-blind. He’d fled then and run into Shiro, eyes glowing gold with the presence of something beyond mortality.

In the dark they found each other, vessels to the gods that they had hoped to serve, and lay in love together.

Keith surges up even as Shiro leans down to kiss him. This is the spark that brought the universe forth from nothing.

-

The Blades watch Keith like he’s a curiosity but do not ask any questions. He finds himself wondering if they’re picking through his features in search for Galran features. In truth, there’s not much difference: the Galra are taller than even Shiro, and just as broad of shoulder. Keith is still a head shorter than Shiro; these days he remembers his father’s height only by point of reference. It was a comfort to find the temple his father had tended to still standing, after being forced out of the other temple.

To have the Blades on their sides increases their allies from the Balmeran and Olkari tribes. They perform a raid of their own, freeing a philosopher named Slav at the behest of the Blades. Together they construct a plan to fight the Galran empire.

In the moments between, they worry if it will be enough.

It’s not.

They fight Zarkon again, and even though Zarkon falls in battle, Shiro vanishes. Keith is left to search and maintain the altar of the First God once more. 

“No wonder they cast you out,” Lance spits one day when the rest of the paladins have plead for Keith to take over Shiro’s lion--the lion that moves for him alone. “You’re tearing us apart.”

“Shiro’s the only one who's never given up on me,” Keith says, voice shaking ever so slightly. “I'm not going to give up on him.”

-

Allura finds Keith later, even as the others plead for him to let their hero go. Keith listens but cannot obey, mind thinking of the open wound that is Pidge’s family's absence.

“What we do is bigger than ourselves,” Allura says, “even if those we lose are irreplaceable--”

“You called us paladins from the beginning,” Keith says. Allura goes silent, and the rest follow.

“I did not think--” Allura says finally, understanding taking root.

“You knew that we came from the temple of the Five,” Keith says. “You know as much as anyone that we hold our rites sacred and secret.”

“What are you talking about?” one of the others asks.

“By the laws of the Five, Keith has been formally recognized as the Paladin of the Red Lion,” Allura says slowly.

“So?”

“Symbolically, he’s married to the First God as the avatar of the Second,” Allura says reluctantly.

“What does that mean in practice?” The murmuring kicks up.

“It means that he married another avatar, the Paladin of the Black Lion, and is connected to them--”

“--Shiro,” Keith says. “It’s Shiro.”

There is silence as they carefully do not look at the space where Shiro would stand, if he were present: just left of Keith, leaned up against an empty stretch of wall. If Shiro were not lost to the Galra, or even death.

“How the hell does the most-highly ranked adherent become banished from their god’s temple?” Pidge says in dazed horror.

“Very easily,” Keith says, voice steady, “when the only person who would care is gone.”

“I can’t--” Hunk says. “--to do so would be to turn your back on that they served. Do the Five still watch over the temple?”

Keith doesn’t answer, and the trio think of the lonely temple Keith had maintained in exile, and the altars there.

“How could you--” Lance says, mind catching on the city flowering around the temple, left vulnerable now.

“I’m not as good a person as Shiro,” Keith snaps, eyes flashing, “but I never asked for that. Where is _your_ god’s protection in the absence of mine?”

The room is quiet as Keith leaves.

-

“How many times are you going to save me before this is over?”

They've done it. Keith’s done it--found Shiro again, and saved him.

Keith’s hands move steadily through Shiro’s long hair as he gathers the words. It’s a hypnotic motion, gentle as they wash hair that that has never before known length like this. Shiro is almost too still in the bath but his gaze is steady on Keith.

“As many times as it takes,” Keith says, low and steady. Wordlessly, Shiro wraps his arms around Keith and tucks his face in his lap. They linger like that until Shiro reaches up and tugs ineffectively at Keith’s pinned-up hair until Keith reaches up and pulls out the clips for him.

“Mm,” Shiro says, surrounded by the curtain of Keith’s long, lush hair. Keith laughs and pets Shiro’s head, combing through the silver-bright and dark locks.

“As many times as it takes,” Keith repeats. This time Shiro kisses him, long and deep, and tugs Keith the rest of the way into the bath.

-

Shiro is back, Keith realizes, but different. But it's nothing unexpected, not with the way capture and torture change those they touch.

The Second God calls him away to fight with the Blades, and Shiro lets him go as easily as he breathes. Keith tries to remember those Shiro left behind when he entered the Temple and tries not to feel hurt to be let go so easily.

-

Keith finds himself maintaining altars for the First and Second Gods even while with the Blades. They say nothing until the mission in which Keith meets Krolia.

“You are not beholden to their gods,” Krolia says, “they call so few. Marmora is strong and will protect you.”

“I serve the Five,” Keith says, “they chose me as much as I chose them.”

“You are of my blood, too,” Krolia insists. “You do not need the gods of these lands.”

“You left when I was a child,” Keith says. “Regardless of the reasons--you don't get to choose for me anymore. I was an orphan and now I am grown.”

“Your hair,” Krolia says. Krolia wears her hair short as Galran warrior tradition. Keith's is long and bound up in a neat chignon as modest as any married woman’s. “You are--”

“It does not matter so much to the gods I serve,” Keith says. “Only that I am willing and faithful.”

Krolia has nothing to say to this.

-

Shiro is fleeing with Zarkon's demi-mortal son, discarding him with Galran warrior generals and leading Keith still further away. It's wrong and almost every vision that slipped before Keith’s dreaming eyes while he was away. It’s terrifying but Keith can't give up--won't. 

All that’s left to do is follow Shiro, even to the edge of the underworld, and beyond if he must.

“Shiro, please,” he says. “I promise we can fix this, we just have to get back to the others--”

Shiro turns to him finally, deep within the earth. The strange light in Shiro’s eyes is Galran violet--so different from their gods’, yet still as beautiful as Keith always finds Shiro--that must be the result of Zarkon's witch and her casting.

“No, Keith,” Shiro rumbles. “I took care of the rest myself. There’s no one left.”

The living metal arm lights up violet, leaving the air crackling with its energy.

“Everything will be okay,” Keith promises, and dodges Shiro’s arm.

-

The fight hurts more than the Blade’s trial. It can’t not: this is Shiro that Keith fights, but brutal. Shiro fights with a fatal grace, economical and less formal than the drills they learned as youths. This is the strength that Shiro showed only as gladiator, lost but driven to survive. 

The alternative to fighting Shiro is to give up, and whatever end that shapes is unthinkable. There is little time for Keith to think of such things anyways, holding back as much as he can for as long as he can.

It comes down to the living metal arm bearing down with all Shiro’s strength like a blade for Keith’s neck, held aloft but hot enough to burn an aching scar along Keith’s cheek and jaw.

“I love you,” Keith says, because if he fails at this, then it's something Shiro needs to know. The bayard--the First God’s, he realizes as it forms in his hand, not the Second’s as he expects--sings through the air as it cuts away the living metal arm in a single, clean motion.

“Keith--” Shiro says, gasping as he stumbles back from Keith to fall to his knees. The cliff crumbles under his weight slightly. Keith scrambles after him, reaching out. Shiro flinches back, the violet glow in his eyes dimmed but still present. “--I don't think it's all gone, I can still feel it--”

More slowly this time, Keith reaches out. Shuddering, Shiro shuts his eyes as Keith's hands alight on his cheeks; it's not Keith he doesn’t trust but himself. 

“Everything’s going to be okay,” Keith promises again, “we just need to get somewhere more stable first.”

“I don’t think I can move,” Shiro confesses, and he's right: the violet light is flickering but growing stronger. 

“It’s okay,” Keith says, smiling reassuringly down at Shiro. Then he leans down to press their foreheads together, calling forth their gods. It’s a strange feeling, like being a vessel overflowing with life while still more is poured in. 

Finally their gods begin to withdraw; the fading gold reveals no violet in Shiro’s eyes. Keith has time to smile at Shiro once more before the earth gives way beneath them.

They fall together.

-

“You found me,” Shiro sighs, voice tight with emotion as they lie cradled within his lion. Later they will have had the time to heal inside and out, but for now the aches are fresh and the wounds undressed.

“As many times as it takes,” Keith says.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Hozier's "Work Song." The title on this one switched a lot, with runs including Fall Out Boy's "Demigods" and "Centuries."  
> I've been working on this to distract my stressed-out brain, which is basically how the hope suite ended up written/ (Except instead of writing most in my car and workplace on breaks I've been writing on the bus and in my lecture hall because going back to school.) Actually not sure when I'll be able to watch through S7 when it drops since I have 2 weeks left on this course, fingers crossed I don't die and can watch soon.  
> Listen. The Cosmic rites don't technically have to be ritual sex. Keith and Shiro didn't have to, regardless of how the lions felt. But Zarkon and Alfor definitely had sex the year they completed the rites together, which is weird for Allura. Also Keith because even if he wasn't a Paladin, he represented the Black Lion at the time of the rites. Shiro is the only Paladin of the Black Lion to Keith.  
> Is Keith feminized in this fic? I guess?? I'm very tired and Keith does what he wants.


End file.
